Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i PCWorld

Tech and trends that will affect you today and beyond. Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/obamasxsw PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA can’t comment on the specifics of the ongoing feud between Apple and the FBI, but he did sit down with Texas Tribune editor-in-chief Evan Smith at the recent South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive to weigh in on one of the most pressing issues facing American society today: Is national security more important than privacy in the digital age? “The question we now have to ask is if technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong there’s no key, there’s no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we disrupt a terrorist plot?” Obama said. “If you can’t…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/hpelitex3vid IT’S A HELL of a time to launch a Windows phone, and yet that’s exactly what HP did at this year’s Mobile World Congress, when it debuted its Elite x3 flagship. This premium-level device enters a wasteland littered with failed phones, an ecosystem that, at last report, clings to just one percent of the worldwide market. Despite the clear and significant risks, HP seems to have a reasonable strategy: Make it a beautiful, powerful device. Sell it into the cash-rich, Windows-centric corporate world. Finally, emphasize Continuum (go.pcworld.com/w10continuum), that standout feature in Windows 10 Mobile, the one thing its rivals Android and iOS can’t touch. Just settle a Windows 10 phone into a special dock, and it can control a connected display and input devices, acting…

Make smart purchases, stay safe online. GENERIC TOP-LEVEL DOMAINS (gTLDs) that have sprung up in recent years have become a magnet for cybercriminals, to the point where some of them host more malicious domains than legitimate ones. Spamhaus, an organization that monitors spam, botnet, and malware activity on the Internet, has recently published a list of the world’s top 10 “worst TLDs.” What’s interesting is that the list is not based on the overall number of abusive domains hosted under a TLD, but on the TLD’s ratio of abusive domains compared to legitimate ones. Over the years, lists of spam-friendly TLDs have typically had .com, .net, and .org at the top. However, a TLD’s trustworthiness ultimately relies on the ability of the organization that manages it—known as the registry—to police…

TESTED IN PCWORLD LABS In this section, hardware & software go through rigorous testing. WITH ITS NEW SPECTRE X360 15T, HP is offering a different approach to the high-end, high-performance 15-inch laptop. This is a laptop, the company says, that’s aimed at folks who want a sizable screen and reasonably great performance wrapped in a great package. The Spectre X360 15T (go.pcworld.com/spectrex360) certainly has the “great package” part down. It’s essentially a bigger version of the beautiful 13-inch Spectre X360. Both feature a similar CNC-milled aluminum chassis, as well as a 10-point touch IPS panel that can be folded back into A-frame mode or tablet mode. Most impressive is that, despite the Spectre X360 15T having a far larger screen than the 13-inch version, the two models are the same…

THE NEW SAMSUNG T3 (go.pcworld.com/samsungt3) and its predecessor, the T1, are the handiest and fastest USB SSDs on the market. Indeed, the T1 I’ve been using for the last year or so has saved me so much time moving data from PC to PC and installing software, I don’t know what I’d do without it (other than waste a lot of time). It’s far faster than anything else I’ve tried, and the thin, wide profile doesn’t make a lump in the pocket like the average thumb drive does. At 2.3 inches wide, 3 inches long, and 0.4 inch thick, the T3 is slightly larger than the T1, has a new luxurious velvety texture, and, at 1.8 ounces, has a more reassuring heft. All nice improvements, but I was hoping for…

THE RAZER BLACKWIDOW Ultimate 2016 Edition (go.pcworld.com/blackwidowrazer) gaming keyboard is the epitome of an incremental upgrade—and that’s absolutely fine. Take the totally competent keyboard we saw in 2014 (go.pcworld.com/blackwidowrazer2014), make a couple of smart tweaks, and put it back on the market. Voilà, you’re done. Familiar faces So what are those smart tweaks? I’ve identified two small but notable changes. Namely, no macro keys and a refined Num Lock/Caps Lock/Game Mode indicator tray. Per the first: The 2014 BlackWidow Ultimate (and RGB-enabled BlackWidow Chroma; go.pcworld.com/blackwidowchroma) had a column of five macro keys arrayed down the left side of the board. They’re gone. There are no dedicated macro keys on the 2016 BlackWidow Ultimate. That’s surprising, given how long macro keys have been a standard feature on gaming keyboards. For Razer—which…

DON’T FEEL DUMB if you’re sometimes flummoxed by the navigation in an iPhone or Android app, or even within iOS or Android itself. It happens to the best of us. You’re happily tapping around when, quite suddenly, you reach a dead end. Maybe you’re trying to find the Settings menu, or you want to change the font on a message. Maybe you just want to go back where you came from. But there’s no obvious way to do it. The sleek, minimalist designs of the Android and iOS ecosystems, while certainly attractive, are notoriously tricky to navigate. But there’s a method to the madness, and knowing how common buttons and visual cues function in Android and iOS will make it much easier to achieve your goals. 1. Take a bite…

MUCH OF THE ENCRYPTION WORLD today depends on the challenge of factoring large numbers, but scientists now say they’ve created the first five-atom quantum computer with the potential to crack the security of traditional encryption schemes. In traditional computing, numbers are represented by either 0s or 1s, but quantum computing relies on atomic-scale units, or “qubits,” that can be simultaneously 0 and 1—a state known as a superposition that’s far more efficient. It typically takes about 12 qubits to factor the number 15, but researchers at MIT and the University of Innsbruck in Austria have found a way to pare that down to five qubits, each represented by a single atom, they recently said. Using laser pulses to keep the quantum system stable by holding the atoms in an ion…

MICROSOFT IS ADDING a new weapon to its aggressive Windows 10 push—or at least it appears that it is. Microsoft has added what sounds a lot like an advertisement for Windows 10 to a recent Patch Tuesday release for Internet Explorer, bundling it in with a critical security patch. The new update affects only Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs and brings an upgrade prompt to Internet Explorer 11. In its description of update KB3146449 (go.pcworld.com/updatedexplorer11), Microsoft says it “adds functionality to Internet Explorer 11 on some computers that lets users learn about Windows 10 or start an upgrade to Windows 10.” Or as we common folk call it, an ad. As Woody Leonhard at InfoWorld first reported, this update will supposedly put a blue banner on the IE11 new tab…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/samsunggs7vid I AM FACING a predicament here that I’m sure many of my iPhone reviewing brethren have experienced before: The Samsung Galaxy S7 (go.pcworld.com/galaxys7) is merely an incremental update to its predecessor, which makes it hard to justify the upgrade considering the Galaxy S6 was the top contender for 2015’s phone of the year. Is this what it feels like to review the “s” models of the iPhone? If it were an iPhone, the Galaxy S7 would be called the Galaxy S6s. It offers minor improvements, including slightly better battery life, a marginally better rear-facing camera, and a somewhat more refined metal-and-glass chassis. It also marks the return of the microSD expansion slot to Samsung’s devices, as well as dust and water resistance. Despite all these…

THERE ARE NO BAD GRAPHICS CARDS, only poorly priced graphics cards. Shifting MSRPs can sway recommendations in the blink of an eye. Consider the fierce battle going on in the $500 to $600 range: When AMD’s Radeon R9 Fury launched, it delivered great bang-for-buck for people wanting a bit more oomph than the GeForce GTX 980, but who couldn’t drop $650 on a GTX 980 Ti or Fury X. Unfortunately for AMD, a mix of supply issues and slashed costs on Nvidia’s end made high-end, overclocked GTX 980s a more compelling option shortly thereafter. But now, AMD’s family of cards powered by robust Fiji chips with high-bandwidth memory can be found much more easily, and prices for Fury graphics cards have fallen as low as $500. And Sapphire, one of…

SUPERHOT. IT’S A REAL GAME, FINALLY—nearly three years after the original demo emerged on the Internet (birthed from the 7 Day FPS Challenge game jam) and two years after the developers raised $250,000 on Kickstarter. That original Superhot demo is still up. You can play it: go.pcworld.com/superhotdemo, if you’re curious. (You’ll need the Unity Web Player installed.) But if you missed the zeitgeist: It’s a first-person shooter, except time only moves full-speed when you move. Stand still and everything slows to a crawl. Bullets hang in the air, red trails stretching out behind. People are practically motionless, frozen mid-charge. Lucky for you, because the odds are overwhelming. You’re a one-man army, taking out anonymous red enemies en masse, watching bullets idly twirl past your skull, exchanging shots with statues. Pause.…

How to build, maintain, and fix your tech gear. SHOW OF HANDS: Who feels like it’s too inconvenient to fully shut down your computer at night? Sure, you might save some energy or battery life with a full shutdown, and the system might appreciate having a fresh start in the morning. But who wants to wait around for Windows to boot from scratch? Windows 10 has an answer to this dilemma with Fast Startup. Much like Fast Boot in Windows 8, Fast Startup creates a master file during shutdown that stores certain system files such as the Windows kernel and device drivers. Upon startup, the system loads those files back into RAM. The result is a shutdown process that closes all applications, files, and user accounts, but doesn’t require a…

FORMATTING IS EASILY one of the biggest annoyances when copying text from the web into a local document. That’s not a problem if you’re using a plain text editor like Sublime Text, but it becomes a big hassle in programs like Microsoft Word. Here are several ways you can make sure you get plain text and not words in bold, italics, or a different font every time you paste text. Word 2013 and 2016 If you’re running a newer version of Word, Microsoft offers a built-in solution to strip text of its original formatting. When you right-click to add text to your document you’ll see three options: paste with the formatting from the source, paste with the formatting of your document, and paste in plain text only. The last…

OPERA FIRED A BROADSIDE in the web content wars, becoming the first desktop web browser with built-in ad blocking—and explicitly encouraging users to turn it on to improve their browsing experiences. Competing browsers like Chrome or Firefox assign plug-ins like AdBlock Plus the task of blocking ads. But with Opera’s 37.0.2162.0 developer build for Mac OS and Windows, it’s baked right into the software. Opera says that turning on the ad-blocking feature can cut page load times by a whopping 90 percent, which PCWorld confirmed using a test build. According to Krystian Kolondra, the senior vice president in charge of engineering for Opera, the current approach to advertising is damaging users’ online experiences. “Our goal is to provide the fastest and the smoothest online experience for our users,” he said…

IT TOOK 1.4 MILLION MILES for Google’s self-driving cars to learn that people can be terrible drivers—even people operating the city bus. “We don’t like cars bumping into things,” Chris Urmson, Director of Google’s Self-Driving Project, told the audience during his recent SXSW panel. Back in February, one of Google’s cars got into an accident with a bus while trying to get back on the road from a right turn lane. The car estimated that there was not enough space for the bus to get through so assumed the bus driver was going to stop and let the car through. “The car made an assumption about what the bus driver was going to do, and the bus driver made an assumption about what the car was going to do, and…

ABOUT A YEAR and a half ago, I received a somewhat menacing voicemail from the Microsoft Store. The store representative reminded me that I’d spent a good chunk of change on a Surface Pro 3 (go.pcworld.com/surpro3rev), and—to paraphrase—it’d be a shame if something happened to it without extended warranty coverage. Peeved, but confident in my resolve never to pay for additional device warranties, I deleted the message. A little over a year later, my Surface Pro 3 started developing a nasty yellow discoloration along its left edge. Microsoft’s one-year warranty had already expired, and now the company wanted $320 plus tax for an out-of-warranty repair. That store rep might’ve gotten the last laugh if it wasn’t for my credit card, which automatically adds an extra year of warranty coverage for…

SEVENTEEN INCHES WIDE. More than 10 pounds of heft. A socketed Core i7 Skylake CPU and a desktop GTX 980 card crammed inside. More graphics horsepower than any laptop we’ve ever tested. When does a laptop cease to be a laptop? Origin’s EON17-SLX (go.pcworld.com/eon17slx) might be the answer. Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/origineon17vid Design Origin has never shied away from sacrificing portability on the altar of power. I should know—I hauled an Origin laptop around for about a The EON17-SLX carries on Origin’s proud tradition of making weight lifting/laptop hybrids with a 16.8-by-12-by-1.8–inch chassis, and a (literally) staggering 10.5-pounds of weight. And that’s not counting the power brick cinder block, which adds another three pounds to the total. I’m typing this review on a dainty 970M-equipped MSI laptop—you could fit…

THERE ARE TIMES when Asus’s designs rival Apple’s. Indeed, anything with “Zen” in front of it at least attempts the feat, and the company’s Zen AiO Z240IC (go.pcworld.com/zenaiopro) all-in-one has come close to capturing that iMac-like magic. Out of the box, we were impressed with this all-in-one’s attractive design and aluminum chassis. After firing up the Zen AiO we were doubly impressed. Apple would rattle on about “retina,” but in PC-land what you’re talking about is a 3840 by 2160 UHD resolution display (commonly known as 4K). The high density of the pixels makes everything super smooth-looking, and if you throw a UHD demo file at it…yowser! If there were HDMI input, I’d say the Z240IC might make sense as a dorm-room entertainment center. As is, it’ll have to settle…

Just how many CPU cores do you need for PC gaming? The conventional wisdom for the last few years has been four or even two cores—if you have Hyper-Threading. That convention got upended with DirectX 12’s ability to use multicore CPUs more efficiently than previous DirectX versions. But how many more? I broke out the latest gaming benchmarks to find the answer. HOW I TESTED For my test I used the latest build of Windows 10 on a PC with an eight-core Core i7-5960X, 32GB of DDR4/2133 RAM, and an AMD Radeon Fury X GPU. To see the effect of losing cores, I manually switched off cores and Hyper-Threading while running the test. Note that as you scale back the core count on the chip, Turbo Boost reacts by giving…

EXCEL 2016’S MANY new features include six new chart types. We’ll go over three of them here and talk about how they could be used with your data. Treemap: Designed to show hierarchies Treemap has nine variations, all of which show a hierarchical view of the target data and how the sections of that hierarchy compare in size to each other. The main branches of the tree are displayed as large rectangles, with sub-limbs branching out into smaller rectangles. The best applications for this chart design are data with categories/groups and subcategories/subgroups. Examples would include organizational charts, product inventory; numbers per capita, percentages per area; budgets, sales; battery, disk, or memory usage. 1. Open your spreadsheet, select the target data, and click Insert > Insert Hierarchy Chart > Treemap. The…

Gabe Gerzevske asked how he could speed up Microsoft’s new operating system. No one likes to click a weblink, open a program, or type a word…and then wait while their computer ponderously considers performing that task. If Windows is taking too much time to do its job, a few modest setting changes can help speed it up. 1. Remove unnecessary autostarters You might be shocked to discover how many programs load automatically every time you boot. Each one slows down the boot process a bit, and some may continue to slow down Windows after the boot, as well. To see how bad the situation is, right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager. Click the Startup tab. (If you don’t see any tabs at the top of the window, click…